Farming in the Magical World

In a room on the first floor, a figure sat silently, and the room was very quiet.

At this moment, Melissa was not busy with the task given to her by the lord. Instead, she sat at the table with one hand supporting her chin and the other tapping lightly on the table, looking as if she was in a daze.

She was in a bad mood, feeling frustrated and fearful, and hesitant about whether she should start her escape again.

This made it impossible for her to concentrate on her work, so she didn't even bother with the tasks that little Lanny had given her, and instead often sat at this table in a daze.

After being betrayed and her family suffered a devastating upheaval, she fled to Black Mountain Village, believing she would live a quiet, uneventful life, growing old there until her death, buried and forgotten by the villagers, disappearing completely from the world. She would also take her noble surname "Lee," and the family's glory, with her, and vanish from the world, never to be mentioned again.

This is probably her most likely fate.

Revenge? She had thought about it, and she had tried, but there was really no way!

Having been cursed with the "Black Vine Seed," casting any magic is futile. Aside from her immense magical power and her status as a great mage, she's just a frail, weak woman—how could she possibly seek revenge?

She doesn't even know who her enemy is. Even if she has the ability, what can she do? And who should she turn to?

We can't just wipe out all the nobles and magicians in the Bauhinia, can we?

If that were to happen, those deeply hidden old monsters would probably be unable to resist showing themselves and launching a full-scale attack on this "great demon".

"Black Vine Seed" is an extremely malevolent spell, known as a mage's nightmare, and is one of the forbidden arts strictly prohibited throughout the entire magical world.

Black vines are strange and chaotic parasitic organisms that parasitize tall trees. Their roots penetrate directly into the host's body to absorb nutrients, while they release a strange toxin into the host's body, causing the host's growth to become extremely bizarre after parasitism.

The same applies to the magic known as the "Seed of the Black Vine." Once it enters the victim's body, it absorbs the victim's magical elements to strengthen itself, while interfering with the victim's magical power flow, rendering the victim unable to cast any magic.

This is not the most terrifying part. The most terrifying part is that this "Black Vine Seed" not only absorbs magic power, but also directly absorbs the victim's life force after the magic power in the victim's body is exhausted. This process can last for many years.

The victims are not only left to wait for death because their magic is disrupted, but they also live in fear of having their life force drained after their magic is exhausted. It can be called the most terrifying form of torture in the world.

Her good fortune lay in the fact that those who attacked her were not proficient in the "Black Vine Seed," and had clearly only recently mastered it, resulting in a very slow rate of magic absorption. This process would last for decades, until she grew old.

But this is also her misfortune.

Because it meant that she would spend the rest of her life tossing and turning in this slowly consuming fear, wailing in terror, until death.

After this thing was implanted in her body, she inquired about it in the magic world, but the news she received made her utterly despondent.

In the magical world, this spell is generally considered to have no solution, which is one of the reasons it is called forbidden magic. Only some vague hints suggest that this spell is not without a way out; that is, if enough magical power is forcibly injected to reach the spell's maximum limit, things might change.

However, this would require a massive amount of magic power; one or two great mages wouldn't be enough, maybe three? The message did not provide an exact number.

Although the conditions mentioned in the message were harsh, and she couldn't find another great mage willing to risk everything to pour their magic into her body, at least it was a glimmer of hope, wasn't it? This was also the main reason why she had been hiding in Black Mountain Village instead of ending her life in despair.

Over the years, she has never given up and has been carefully experiencing the "Black Vine Seed" within her body. In her view, it is a self-operating magic, an extremely pure magic power. Even if she does not interfere, this thing keeps rolling and swirling within her body, like something with life and consciousness.

Since she couldn't find a great mage to help her, she tried to train one herself. She also secretly observed the children in the surrounding villages, trying to find an apprentice among them and teach them magic.

But what was both expected and unexpected was that almost none of the children around him had any hope of becoming great magicians; they were all mediocre.

That's not surprising, since people with exceptional magical talent aren't easy to find.

Thinking that her enemy was at least a great mage, she had no choice but to give up the idea. Without becoming a great mage, she wouldn't even have a chance to take revenge, so why let these irrelevant people waste their lives?

It wasn't until she was summoned to the castle by Lanny to help him make those paper things that she heard Albert Joe's name from the prisoners.

She didn't know the person, but she remembered the surname and the family it represented.

That was the mortal enemy of the Li family, an enemy that had been at odds with the Li family for hundreds of years. Many members of the Li family had died at the hands of the enemy in each generation. This hatred had not faded with the passage of time, but rather tended to deepen.

When she became a great magician, her family was terrified and repeatedly sent people to ask for her help to resolve the centuries-old feud between them. However, she was focused on her various interesting magical experiments and ignored them until her family was destroyed and she began her escape.

She had just been attacked when her family was completely wiped out by a group of masked knights. The timing was perfect. She always felt that it must have been the work of the mysterious great mage who attacked her.

But Albert Joe's appearance made her feel that there was more to the story, and that the people attacking her and her family were probably not the same group.

It wasn't that she looked down on the Qiao family; with their limited resources, they simply couldn't afford to hire a great magician, and it was impossible for the Qiao family to be the sole culprit.

It seems that they either learned of the mysterious archmage's actions by chance, or they were simply instigated by him, with both sides launching a coordinated attack that caught the family completely off guard.

Looking back now, if her family hadn't been destroyed, with their centuries-old wealth, she might have been able to find some great mages to help her. Although this involved immense danger, for great mages, the opportunity to explore this mysterious forbidden art was a considerable temptation.

It seems that Albert hasn't discovered his hiding place yet, but he will definitely find it. She knows all too well the stubbornness of the Joe family knights.

The question now is whether she should continue on the run or reveal her identity to Lanny and seek refuge with the Wells family.

The reason she still had the idea of ​​seeking refuge instead of running away directly was mainly because she knew some details about the Wells family, or at least what she thought they knew.

This was information she inadvertently learned during her escape, after communicating with some magical figures from the Kingdom of Andrew.

It is said that Lanny's grandfather, Wells Claudia, was also a magician, and possessed the considerable strength of a level nine magician. However, what puzzled her was that these reports did not mention August and Lanny, the father and son.

This was also what puzzled her. Since Claudia was a somewhat famous magician with considerable strength, why did Lanny show no magical reaction at all?

Could it be that he had already reached the level of a great mage, with his magical elements forming a world of their own, which is why she had no sense of it?

Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why she didn't sense any magical element fluctuations from Lanny.

If Lanny really reached the level of a great mage, her revenge would have hope. At worst, she could just give herself to him. It was just finding a younger brother lover, what was the big deal? She was quite confident in her appearance.

But if he didn't, once he revealed his true identity, Lanny would probably kick him out of the castle immediately, and there was even a possibility that he would be given directly to Albert.

After all, Caster Ridge was really poor. Even a small amount of money from the Joe family could be a fortune for Lanny, which made her really have no confidence in Lanny.

What's more, this guy is now being watched by his father-in-law, which makes her even more uneasy.

But if she were to run away, where could she, a weak woman, possibly escape to?

Albert clearly possesses considerable combat skills, and given that he was sent by the family head to track him, it's no surprise that he must be skilled at tracking.

Ugh! So annoying!

She sighed heavily again, looking at the bright sunlight outside the window and listening to the clanging of blacksmithing, which made her even more irritable.

Boom!Boom!Boom!

A rhythmic knocking sound reached her ears, but Melissa didn't want to move at all; she guessed it was that little girl Candy again.

I don't know if everyone in the castle is too busy to pay attention to her, or if she's just bored and wants to chat with someone. These past few days, she's been coming here often, talking about all sorts of gossip about the castle, going on and on and on.

Even though I rarely talk to her, she can talk on and on for a long time, as if she doesn't care whether I respond or not.

She would ramble on about things related to the castle, such as how she initially misunderstood the lady, and now she felt sorry for her, how Susan had been clinging to Tim lately, how Nina had been talking in her sleep last night, blah blah blah, it was incredibly boring.

But the most frequent topic in her conversation was that little guy Lanny. She said that the young master was the one who came up with the idea of ​​training the guards, and Tim just copied it. She also said that the young master could make really powerful knight swords, and that the young master was actually very good at business.

It's obvious that Candy likes this young master very much, but because she's still young, she doesn't understand matters of the heart. However, she talks about the young master all the time, and her feelings for him are too obvious.

Although it was boring and he rarely responded to the little girl, he still learned a bit more about the castle from her words.

If what the little girl said is true, then Lanny is indeed a rare talent. He can train troops, run a business, and even possesses some unknown methods.

But what does this have to do with me? As long as Lanny isn't a great magician, my revenge is hopeless.

Unfortunately, the girl didn't mention this at all. Even when I subtly inquired, she seemed completely clueless. It seemed she knew nothing about magic.

But Melissa, the seasoned veteran, was completely fooled by Candy. How could she not know that Lenny meditated every morning?

Lenny had sternly warned her not to bring this up, so she could only pretend to be naive. Melissa never imagined that this seemingly innocent and cute girl could lie, which is why she fell for her trick.

Clearly, Melissa hadn't heard the saying that the more beautiful a woman is, the more likely she is to deceive. Zhang Wuji was the most qualified to say on this matter.

Perhaps because she didn't respond, the person outside knocked for a while and then pushed open the door, followed by a series of heavy footsteps.

"Candy, I'm really not in the mood to listen to your chatter today!" Melissa didn't turn around, but just wanted the girl to leave as soon as possible.

"Oh, does Candy come here often?"

The next moment, a male voice suddenly rang in her ear. Startled, she turned around abruptly, only to find Lenny looking at her with a mocking expression. "I asked you here to help me with the paper, not to just stand around!"

Melissa rolled her eyes as she looked at Lanny's excessively pale but still handsome face.

She could tell that Lanny wasn't really angry; he was just joking with her. But she really wasn't in the mood to joke with this little brother right now.

Remembering that he was at least employed by the other party, he perked up and laid out his work from the past few days. "Here, this is what I've made, but it seems I can't write on it yet..."

"Oh, you've actually achieved some results?" Lanny's eyes lit up when he saw something on the table.

What appeared before Lanny was a slightly yellowed sheet of paper, with messy, scattered edges, several millimeters thick and of extremely uneven thickness.

If we don't use established paper types like printer paper as a standard, this thing is practically paper.

But to call it paper is a stretch.

Not to mention the exaggerated thickness and extreme differences in thickness, touching it with your hand will even leave your hand covered in crumbs, making it unsuitable for writing.

"It's not even paper, you can't write on it, and it's prone to dust. Nobody wants to use this stuff!" Melissa's answer was very calm, as if she hadn't made it herself, and she even seemed a little disgusted.

"You can't say that!" Lanny waved his hand excitedly, picked up the things on the table and examined them carefully. "We've already made some progress. The next step is simply figuring out how to fade and bleach them, and how to compact and shape them. We're almost there!"

"Tell me quickly, how did you do it? I really didn't expect you to achieve results so quickly, haha!"

"The color is yellowish, could it be made from tree bark?"

After talking for a while without hearing a reply from Granny Mei, Lanny realized that Granny Mei seemed to be in a strange mood today.

"what happened to you?"

Turning his head, he looked at the old woman who appeared aged but showed no signs of it, and realized that Granny Mei seemed a little off today.

Are you not pretending anymore?

Melissa did not answer the question. Instead, she sat up straight and looked Lanny up and down carefully again. "When did you become a great mage?"